Mariah Carey says she was ‘mortified’ in first interview since New Year’s Eve performance

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NEW YORK — Mariah Carey says she was “mortified” in “real time” during her disastrous live performance just before the ball dropped on ABC’s “Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve.”

Carey spoke to Entertainment Weekly in her first interview since the show in which she stumbled through her songs. At many points she stopped singing, even while a prerecorded vocal track played in the background.

Carey’s publicist blamed show producer Dick Clark Productions earlier this week for not addressing technical difficulties before the performance. Carey reiterated that stance to EW, praising the late Clark and saying that he “would not have let an artist go through that and he would have been as mortified as I was in real time.” She described the night as “horrible.”